Tumulty: Sherrod Brown will be missed

By Karen Tumulty The Washington Post

Monday

Mar 11, 2019 at 12:01 AM

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has decided not to run for president in 2020. That's too bad.

No doubt it was the pragmatic thing to do.

He's a 66-year-old white man who would have been gasping for oxygen in a field crowded with fresh and diverse faces, as well as more established figures who have the benefit of name recognition and big fundraising operations. Brown's chances of actually winning the Democratic nomination were slim, and would become even more so if former vice president Joe Biden decides to run, as many of those around him now expect him to do.

Still, Brown would have brought to the race a combination of idealism, maturity and practicality that will be missed.

He has impeccable progressive credentials yet is grounded in what is possible. On his lapel, he wears not a congressional insignia or an American flag but a pin with a caged canary — the kind miners used to carry into the earth to warn them of deadly conditions. It is a reminder of the strides that unions and progressive government have made to assure workplace safety and decent wages, benefits and working conditions.

As George Packer wrote in the Atlantic last month, when it still seemed likely that Brown would join the race: "Nothing would test the proposition that the Democratic Party can regain its old working-class base like a presidential candidacy of Sherrod Brown. He has a strong record on issues of race and gender, but you're less likely to hear him speak of patriarchy and white supremacy, let alone intersectionality, than of justice, equality, and dignity for all people. It's a real question whether this will make him acceptable to progressive activists today."

I caught up with Brown last week in South Carolina, on what turned out to be the final leg of his exploratory "Dignity of Work" swing through the early primary states.

"How are we going to get to Medicare-for-all?" one man asked him. Brown resisted jumping onto one of the Democrats' favorite slogans, and instead talked about political reality and what might be legislatively achievable.

"I'm for universal coverage. I want to change people's lives now, as quickly as we can," the senator said, and then launched into a set of proposals that might be more doable, including letting people in their 50s buy into the Medicare system and making Obamacare function more efficiently.

When politicians go on what they call a "listening tour," what they usually mean is that they plan to do a lot of talking. But that was not the sense I got from Brown.

At a job-training center in Columbia, he did indeed listen — intently, patiently — as about 15 people, mostly military veterans and homeless, shared their struggles.

They told him of the mistakes they had made in life and what they had learned from them. One man described how the experience of combat lingers for a lifetime: "You can't unsee the things we have seen." When another veteran mentioned he was a writer, Brown asked him to read a poem he had written. A woman talked about how she had suffered sexual abuse when she was deployed. And the senator was struck by a phrase he heard from one young man, recently living on the street, who said that his job in a fast-food restaurant had taught him "work integrity."

Brown carried their stories to his next stop, an appearance in the crowded living room of longtime South Carolina Democratic leaders Don and Carol Fowler, where he said: "We need to understand some people in this country are invisible, and we fight for them."

His unwavering focus on the plight of workers is the right one if his party is to have any hope of winning back that swath of the upper Midwest that delivered the presidency to Donald Trump. "National Democrats think we have to choose between a progressive message and talking to workers. And it's not a choice. We've got to do both," he said.

As he announced his decision to step back from running for president, Brown told the Cincinnati Enquirer: "There are a lot of Democrats that can carry this message."

Brown may be right about that. But if he is, it will be because he helped show the way.

Karen Tumulty (karen.tumulty@washpost.com) is a columnist for The Washington Post.

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